Councils criticised for six-figure pay

John O’Connell, chief executive of the Taxpayers’ Alliance, said there were too many “astronomical” payoffs

Scotland’s council managers have been criticised for complaining about budget cuts while paying hundreds of employees more than £100,000 a year.

According to an audit of local authority remuneration packages for the 2016-17 financial year, 222 officials were paid more than £100,000. Some were council employees while others were employed by “arm’s length” bodies set up by authorities to run local services.

As well as salary, remuneration packages can include benefits in kind, expenses, bonuses, redundancy payments and an employer’s pension contributions.

The largest remuneration package in Scotland — and the third highest in Britain — was £563,862 paid to Norman Strachan, the finance director of Lothian Buses, an arm’s length company linked to Edinburgh council. The bus operator’s engineering director, Bill Devlin, was the eighth highest…

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